Lichen Tang,1 Zheng Lin1,2 

1School of Nursing, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 211166, People’s Republic of China; 2Nursing Department, the First Affiliated Hospital with Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029, People’s Republic of China

Correspondence: Zheng Lin, School of Nursing, Nanjing Medical University, Tianyuan East Road No.818, Jiangning District, Nanjing, Jiangsu, Email linzheng100@163.com

Background: Stigma is assumed to lead to negative illness identity in one who got chronic illness, and there is a lack of understanding regarding the underly mechanisms. However, no research has examined the extent to which stigma was associated with illness identity in people with IBD. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between stigma and illness identity, specifically to examine whether resilience mediated or moderated the relationship.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed among patients diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease from three tertiary hospitals in Jiangsu Province, China. Measurement instruments included the Stigma Scale for Chronic Illness (SSCI), the Resilience Scale for Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (RS-IBD), and the Illness Identity questionnaire (IIQ). Mediation and moderated mediation analyses were conducted.
Results: A total of 322 patients with IBD were involved in the current study. We observed that there was a strong connection between stigma and rejection and engulfment. Moreover, resilience played a partial or complete mediating role in stigma and engulfment, acceptance and enrichment, and resilience moderates the relationship between stigma and rejection.
Conclusion: The current study examined whether resilience mediated or moderated the relationship between stigma and illness identity. These finding add to the theoretical basis of how stigma influences illness identity and help guide the resilience into engulfment reduction programs for IBD.

Keywords: inflammatory bowel disease, stigma, illness identity, resilience